UK Student Gets 8 Months in Prison for Hacking Facebook

A UK court handed down an 8 month sentence this week to a British student convicted of infiltrating Facebook’s internal network. 26 year-old Glenn Mangham hacked into Facebook’s servers from his home in York, England last Spring. Facebook, believing it was the victim of industrial espionage, called in the feds. It didn’t take long to track down Mangham.

Prosecutors have called this attack both “extensive and flagrant.” Facebook told the court that it had to spend $200,000 dealing with the matter. Though, that seems to be what Mangham wanted. It was his claim that he was only attempting to show Facebook that its system was insecure, as he had done in the past with Yahoo. The court was having none of it, ruling that his actions were malicious in nature.

No data was taken in the attacks, and Facebook has since sealed the hole that Mangham exploited. What’s your take on this? Was Mangham a helpful hacker, or a cyber-thug out for himself?

So if you come home from work one day and see me sitting in your living room watching TV you shouldn't get angry at all. A simple "thank you" is all I expect because I pointed out the flaw in the locks in your house.

The difference is that somebody that broke into a home and then sat down to watch TV would essentially be "inside" the house still. They could still cause serious damage, when they could've just left a note on the inside of the door saying "Get a new lock."

This case is a very effective way of publicizing a note like that for all the people who rely on the security of the lock, and considering they didn't even find any evidence of malicious action, they have no real grounds for such a harsh sentence.

I agree with an earlier reply -- people are just scared sheep when they hear "hacker." If they weren't so stupid as to leave networks wide open and attempt to catch every wayward hacker, they might realize that when something like this pops up, they should just fix it as fast as possible and hire the hacker as a security consultant.

Well, there is a big difference between that and finding an exploit in facebook. Home invasion is a much more serious crime.

I think this guy should be punished, but I reckon most people who do similar harmless crimes don't get jail time.

There is a big problem with harsher sentences being handed out just because the crime happens to be done through a computer. Simply because most people don't understand the crime being committed. They just hear "hacker" and piss themselves.

White hat hackers get jail-time, while black hat hackers are roaming free wreaking havoc and nobody does anything about it. Yes, this guy might have cause Facebook some money. Though if someone else had found the exploit or hole it could have easily cost them a more.

You do know that striving for profit against all the other big greedy corporations is what drives innovation right? If we all lived in a hippy commune there would be no pressure to innovate and this sad world we all live in, as you put it, would be much further behind.

LOL! You keep right on believing that my friend. Whatever you need to tell yourself to justify your own greed and get some sleep at night. Oh yeah, and Jesus loves you more than dirty hippies. The Bible says so and it is true, because it says so in the Bible.